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Rating: 
Summary: Captivating!
Review: Don't miss these captivating tales of the life and the times of mathematicians starting from the period of Tsar Peter the Great of Russia, and right up to recent times, at least up to and including the Cold War. Even if you aren't in math, I think you are likely to be caught up in the drama of the various lives, times, and events. The writing is fast paced and engaging, much like that of Constance Reid's books: "Hilbert", or "Courant"... Over the tumultous historical periods, it has been said that mathematicians have been more likely than others to have been uprooted in the upheavals of history, perhaps because they are concerned with theories and ideas that are more universal. But their lives are still much affected by the times and the events of history: The French Revolution(Galois, Poisson, Fourier...), the Napolionic Wars(Cauchy, Abel...), the period of Bismarck and Nationalism in Europe(Weierstrass, Cantor, Lie...), the Russian Revolution(Alexander, Kolmogorov...), the two World Wars, and the crisis period between WWI and WWII(Banach, Hadamard, Courant, Hilbert...), and the Cold War(von Neumann, Wiener...). The pictures on the cover give you a sample of the profiles in the book: G. Polya, K. Weierstrass, A. N. Kolmogorov, N. Wiener, S. Kovalevskaya, and S.-D. Poisson. Even if you won't get to meet them in person (I was a guest at George Polya's ninetieth birthday!), this book is the next best thing.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good historical account of lives
Review: The only reason that this book doesn't get 5 stars is because of the fact that not enough emphasis is placed on the achievements of the mathematicians in terms of their mathematics. However, this does not take away from the fact that is is exteremely well researched, laid out and presented. We get a meaningful insight into how these geniuses (genii?) lived and that fact that they were quite ordinary people with the same levels of hardship (and in some cases even more) as the rest of us. Perhaps an improvement could be made on further mathematicians, both past and present. Still recommended reading.
Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: This book is a collection of short biographies of notable mathematicians from Euler to von Neumann. It does a good job of explaining both a mathematicians background and the significance of their contributions to mathematics. Great to read through or as a reference to have on the shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Good book
Review: This book is a collection of short biographies of notable mathematicians from Euler to von Neumann. It does a good job of explaining both a mathematicians background and the significance of their contributions to mathematics. Great to read through or as a reference to have on the shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Learn how mathematicians interacted with each other
Review: When reading about the great ones of mathematics, I always enjoy short biographies rather than long ones. If the biographer is required to fill a large section of a book, then they tend to cover more detail than I really care for. While I do enjoy some details about the personal life of a mathematician, anything more than just a few morsels tends to detract from their accomplishments in mathematics.
James strikes the perfect balance in describing the lives of these great historical figures. Each biographical sketch is less than ten pages and he covers their life from birth to death. One valuable thing that he does is give their complete names, which is often omitted from biographies. In fact, despite all of my reading about the people of mathematics, there were some whose full names I had not known until I read this book.
The emphasis is on the lives of the people, and the general concepts of the mathematics that they created, rather than the specifics. No formulas are used in the explanations. Personal and professional interactions are a large part of the life of nearly all mathematicians, and from these biographies, we learn many of the specifics of how contemporaries reacted to each other. As is always the case, the full range of human foibles are displayed as the lives of the mathematicians unfold.
The lives of these sixty mathematicians are described in chronological order according to their birth years. Given that they all began their mathematically productive lives at different ages, this leads to some degree of overlap in both directions. Nevertheless, it is possible to easily trace the development of the major mathematical ideas as they are nurtured from early germs to towering oaks.
Mathematicians are people who find themselves in a social and political environment that they must cope with and sometimes just survive in. In this book, you will learn about sixty of them who made a major contribution, sometimes starting from a point of privilege, and other times only after great struggle. It is well worth reading for pleasure and can also be used as a resource for a course in mathematical history. Published in the recreational mathematics e-mail newsletter, reprinted with permission.
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